FLINT IMPLEMENTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. 79 
seen on any part of their surface. Amongst the flints which strewed the 
surface on Gebel Assart were a large number of round nodules. : 
They were evidently imported to this spot for flaking, and most of them 
were more or less chipped by the flint workers. They all consist of a central 
body surrounded by a ring of the same material. Mr. Newbold describes 
these bodies thus :—‘I may briefly notice,’ he says, ‘some singular siliceous 
bodies that occasionally oceur imbedded in the marine limestone, and are 
particularly numerous in the limestone rocks of Thebes. . . . These 
bodies [called morpholites by Ehrenberg] usually assume the shape of 
spheroids encircled by a belt resembling the delineation of a planet with its 
belt. . . .  . . The ring or belt surrounding the main body is often 
divided from it only by a thin partition, and sometimes the ring only is found. 
: The material is identical with that of the bracelets in my possession, 
and it seems evident that the idea of forming a bracelet of them has been 
suggested by the form of the stones. By chipping out the central body, or 
by using a flint from which the central body had disappeared through natural 
causes, the remaining ring might easily be chipped through into the form of 
the bracelets . ., thus accounting for the existence of an abnormal 
structure which, as anthropologists are aware, so rarely presents itself in 
relics of a barbarous age.” 
The idea of forming a flint bangle may have originated, as here suggested 
by General Pitt-Rivers ; but no one who compares the figures of the Koorneh 
bangles in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, with Fig. 8 from the 
mines of Wady el Sheikh, can fail to be satisfied that they have both been 
formed in the same manner—for, as I have said above, they are similar in 
every particular. The series, Figs. 1 to 8, speaks too clearly for itself for 
any doubt to remain that the stages here represented have not begun with a 
‘morpholite’ ring. The artificer selected or made a flattish flint or siliceous 
limestone disk (Fig. 1), trimmed it round, then thinned it by flaking it on 
both sides, sometimes finishing it with great care (Figs. 2, 3, 4), sometimes, 
however, proceeding to the next stage (Fig. 5) without wasting his time on 
what too often proved to be a fruitless labour. For the next stage involved 
the delicate and extremely dangerous operation of perforating the disk. 
From Figs. 2, 3, and 4 it may be seen that this stroke, while in every case 
making a perforation, broke also the disk—Fig. 4 more clearly than the 
other two showing the small cone which had successfully been displaced, 
though at the same moment the operation fractured the disk. _ Figs. 5, 6, 
and 7 show how the first perforation was enlarged by judiciously chipping 
it into a wider and wider ring, while Fig. 8 illustrates an almost completed 
ornament, in which the careful and anxious labour of many days was 
lost by a most unlucky, but by no means necessarily a careless, stroke 
of the artist. ; 
M. de Morgan in his Recherches sur les Origines de 0 Egypte (vol.i. p. 147), and 
Mr. Spurrell, in Petrie & Quibell’s Naqgada and Ballas, pl. Ixxv., fig. 100, 
figure specimens of very delicate bangles from Abydos and Ballas respectively 
(of which the Mayer Museum possesses a specimen, presented by the 
Egypt Exploration Fund), which have been finished by grinding and 
polishing till the thickness of the flint is reduced to j of an inch, a most 
surprising piece of workmanship, which calls from M. de Morgan the remark, 
“Les bracelets de silex sont 4 coup stir les pitces les plus curieuses du_pre- 
historique ¢gyptien, et l’on se demande avec raison comment il a été possible 
de tailler par éclats, sans briser l'objet, des anneaux de 0",07 de diametre 
exterieur et de 0",005 seulement d'epaisseur. . . . Ce ceul fait 
suffirait pour qu'il soit permis de considérer les autochtones de I'Egypte 
comme les plus habiles ouvriers de l’antiquité dans la taille du silex.” Mr. 
Spurrell, supporting the theory of General Pitt-Rivers, holds that these 
